Text Wizard Copywriting - technical writing

Background

I love the challenge of tech stuff.

In this case I pointed out that the client's example equations were wrong because they were dimensionally inconsistent. He told his technical staff to look into it and, no, they didn't stack up.

This twelve-page brochure on radiant heating panels is one of a series of technical sales documents that I put together for S & P Coil Products. The Thermatile project was the most satisfying. It was a new product for them and it came to me without any real plan for the brochure. Two extracts follow...

[A snippet of sales talk]

SPC Thermatiles

The simplest and most efficient way to heat a room from above

A heating system that’s virtually invisible, that’s easy to install, and which takes up absolutely no floor or wall space sounds too good to be true. If you could add energy efficiency to the list of benefits, it would be irresistible.

That irresistible system is here right now. It contains no moving parts, and it drops straight into your existing suspended ceiling.

SPC Thermatiles are by far the simplest and most efficient way to heat a room from above. They fit into standard ceiling grids, release valuable floor and wall space, and – best of all – they heat you, not the air you vent into the atmosphere.

[A snippet of tech talk]

Required water flow-rate

The standard formula for the flow-rate, f, that delivers a duty, Q, is:

	f = Q / (t x SH)
	where:	f is the flow-rate in kilograms per second
		Q is the heat output in Watts
		t is the temperature difference between water flow and return in °C
		SH is the specific heat capacity of water (4,190 Joules per kilogram per °C)
	(NB: since 1 litre of water weighs 1 kilogram, the results for flow-rate are interchangeable between l/s and kg/s)

Panels piped in series
	Treat the series as a single entity. Q is the total heat output of the series, and t is the difference between the temperature of the water flowing into the first panel and leaving the last. No more than three panels should be laid in series.
Panels piped in parallel
	Treat each parallel panel separately. The total flow-rate is the sum of the flow-rates through all parallel panels.
Please note that a minimum flow-rate of 0.005 l/s is required for turbulence and efficient heat output from an SPC Thermatile.